Reading

Children enjoy a range of texts, however the pitch of the text is important too. We can find the level of a book by searching for it on AR Bookfinder. If a match is found, it will tell you the book level, which should be in your child's range. 

A Parent's Guide to Accelerated Reader 

• Make sure your child has a comfortable, quiet place to sit. Distractions such as TV can make it difficult for children to concentrate.
• Give the book to your child for five minutes so they can look at it alone. This allows the child to investigate and explore the text and pictures independently before starting to read.
• Read the title together and ask them to tell you about the story and any questions they may have before beginning.
• Remember talking about books is as important as reading them.
• Children need to have enthusiasm for texts so allow them to choose their own  as well as their school reading books.

It is important that children, particularly in the Early Years and KS1, are given the opportunity to read aloud to an adult as often as possible. It improves their decoding and listening skills. Help your child to sound out and blend any unfamiliar words. If they are still unsure, tell them the word and explain what it means. Then read the sentence again together. Remember to use praise a lot and tell them why they have done well i.e. “I really enjoyed listening to that sentence because you made it sound so exciting!”

Older children may feel that they enjoy reading on their own more and prefer to read in their head instead of aloud to an adult. This is usually evidence that they are enjoying the reading experience and are skilled and independent enough to read alone. The focus for a parent at this point should be more on discussion of comprehension and fostering an environment where sharing reading experiences and opinions about books is valued at home.

One of the most important parts of reading is comprehension. If a child decodes fluently, but does not fully understand the story or text, then they struggle to enjoy or appreciate books. It is therefore essential that children have opportunity to discuss what they are reading. One of the more crucial parts of reading is being able to conclude and infer ideas. Open ended questioning such as; ‘why do you think that happened?’ or ‘what makes you think that?’ will help with this. Asking children to tell you why or show you clues in the text/pictures can improve their inference skills dramatically. We enclose a list of potential questions that could be used in a discussion with a child about a book. This is not an exhaustive list but should hopefully give some starting points for discussion that will help children to unpick and fully understand what they are reading.

Sample questions that you could use for book talk:

● Why did you choose this book? What attracted you to it?

● Did you know you anything about this book before you started reading it? What do you think about it now you have read some? Is it how you imagined it would be? Why/why not?

● Could you tell me what’s happened so far (fiction) or what this book is about ( non-- fiction)?

● What has been the most exciting part? Why?

● What could you do if you can’t read a word? What could you do if you can read a word but don’t know what it means?

● Have you come across this word before?

● How did you know how to say it? Are there any clues in the word? Does it look like other words you know?

● Can you work out what that word means? How can you use the rest of the sentence, page or pictures to help you?

● What other word could the author have used that means the same sort of thing?

● Can you tell me what has happened in this chapter/on this page?Why do you think X (a character) did that?

● How could we describe that character? What are they like? How do we know that from what they say and do?

● How you think x (a character) is feeling at the moment? Show me which words/phrases tell us that.

● Why you think Y (an event) happened?

● What do you think will happen next? What makes you think that?

● How you think the author wants us to feel at this moment? How are they trying to do that? What is he/she trying to do here?

● What do you think the purpose of using ____ (word or phrase) is in this paragraph?

● Why did the author choose that title?

● What is the effect of writing in the past/present tense?